Was amnesty planned?

Was amnesty planned?

Originally published Frederick News-Post

April 02, 2010

By Steven R. Berryman

Awash in constitutional issues for the last year, I now see the convergence of our illegal-immigration issue and the recent health care "win" by our president. Was counting on "amnesty" legislation passage in the plan all along?

Just who were the winners and losers the administration referred to? Was one a political party, and which was the American citizenry?

With both amnesty and health care legislation, the very value of citizenship is at stake, and in more than one way.

Remember that all Americans were promised that illegal immigrants would not benefit from an entitlement to Obamacare; but were the plans always to allow for rapid inclusion in the new health care paradigm?

And are newly forgiven illegal immigrants -- given such a treat -- expected to join the ranks of the political left to refill the void created by the exiting centrist Democrats, many abandoning all hope and headed to tea party protests? Surely labor unions and the "advocacy" group CASA of Maryland will be there helping with the assimilation!

And "advocacy" has provided cover for those in the U.S. illegally.
Are the negative effects of illegal immigration upon America possibly declining in a bad economy? We know the jobs issue is currently ignored; how about public safety?

Recent statistics reported on the relationship between arrestable crimes and legal status by the Center for Immigration Study (www.CIS.org) say so, according to Director Mark Krikorian, and continue to show a worsening trend.

Further, a recent look by The Washington Examiner backs up the correlation between incarcerated illegals and serious crimes highlighted in "Illegals increasingly charged in violent crimes" from March 28 that "Nearly half of the criminal charges filed against the 274 inmates who were being held during the last week of February on ICE warrants in Fairfax, Alexandria and D.C. jails related to violence, drugs and gang participation."...

....ctd http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_columnist.htm?StoryID=103190 for the rest!

srbmgr@comcast.net

An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship

An argument to be made about immigrant babies and citizenship

By George F. Will

Sunday, March 28, 2010; A15 The Washington Post

A simple reform would drain some scalding steam from immigration arguments that may soon again be at a roiling boil. It would bring the interpretation of the 14th Amendment into conformity with what the authors of its text intended, and with common sense, thereby removing an incentive for illegal immigration.

To end the practice of "birthright citizenship," all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." From these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.

A parent from a poor country, writes professor Lino Graglia of the University of Texas law school, "can hardly do more for a child than make him or her an American citizen, entitled to all the advantages of the American welfare state." Therefore, "It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry."

Writing in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, Graglia says this irrationality is rooted in a misunderstanding of the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." What was this intended or understood to mean by those who wrote it in 1866 and ratified it in 1868? The authors and ratifiers could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration.

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 begins with language from which the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause is derived: "All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States." (Emphasis added.)

The explicit exclusion of Indians from birthright citizenship was not repeated in the 14th Amendment because it was considered unnecessary. Although Indians were at least partially subject to U.S. jurisdiction, they owed allegiance to their tribes, not the United States. This reasoning -- divided allegiance -- applies equally to exclude the children of resident aliens, legal as well as illegal, from birthright citizenship.

Indeed, today's regulations issued by the departments of Homeland Security and Justice stipulate:

"A person born in the United States to a foreign diplomatic officer accredited to the United States, as a matter of international law, is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That person is not a United States citizen under the 14th Amendment."
Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois was, Graglia writes, one of two "principal authors of the citizenship clauses in 1866 act and the 14th Amendment." He said that "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States" meant subject to its "complete" jurisdiction, meaning "not owing allegiance to anybody else." Hence children whose Indian parents had tribal allegiances were excluded from birthright citizenship.

Appropriately, in 1884 the Supreme Court held that children born to Indian parents were not born "subject to" U.S. jurisdiction because, among other reasons, the person so born could not change his status by his "own will without the action or assent of the United States." And "no one can become a citizen of a nation without its consent." Graglia says this decision "seemed to establish" that U.S. citizenship is "a consensual relation, requiring the consent of the United States."

So: "This would clearly settle the question of birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens. There cannot be a more total or forceful denial of consent to a person's citizenship than to make the source of that person's presence in the nation illegal."

Congress has heard testimony estimating that more than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally.

Graglia seems to establish that there is no constitutional impediment to Congress ending the granting of birthright citizenship to those whose presence here is "not only without the government's consent but in violation of its law."

georgewill@washpost.com

Illegals increasingly charged in violent crimes

Illegals increasingly charged in violent crimes

By: Freeman KlopottExaminer Staff WriterMarch 28, 2010

(AP file)

The illegal immigrants being held in area jails are increasingly charged with violent crimes as law enforcement agencies focus on taking murderers, rapists and gang members off the streets, according to a review by the Washington Examiner.

Nearly half of the criminal charges filed against the 274 inmates who were being held during the last week of February on Immigration and Customs Enforcement warrants in Fairfax, Alexandria and D.C. jails related to violence, drugs and gang participation.

A senior ICE official said the agency has made targeting violent criminals who are in the country illegally a priority.

"By increasing our focus on taking dangerous criminal aliens off the streets and removing them from the country, we are addressing significant security vulnerabilities," said Enrique M. Lucero, director of ICE's Washington Field Office.

Illegal immigrants have been charged in a number of high-profile crimes in the region in recent months.

» Earlier this month, six suspected illegal immigrants were accused of gang raping a 30-year-old woman they abducted from an Alexandria nightclub.

» In late February, two suspected illegal immigrants brought an 11-year-old girl to a Silver Spring apartment where they both raped her, Montgomery County police said.

» On Christmas Day, authorities say, a suspected illegal immigrant stabbed his 25-year-old roommate to death during a heated early-morning argument in Rockville.

Lucero said ICE's focus on taking violent illegal immigrants off the street is part of the agency's central mission to make the streets safer.

But some immigration advocates are concerned that efforts to catch violent criminals could end up becoming a dragnet for all illegal immigrants in the area.

Donald Kerwin, vice president of programs at the Migration Policy Institute, said, "The fear is that local police will start to go after people who appear to be immigrants for common traffic tickets, and these people will be found to be unauthorized and put in deportation proceedings without having been convicted of anything."

Kerwin said the result of the increased attention on illegal immigrants, violent and nonviolent, will be that a system already "stretched to the breaking point" will fall into ruin.
"ICE has to focus on exercising discretion," he said.

Others say focusing strictly on rounding up violent criminals doesn't go far enough.
Jon Feere, a legal policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, said although applying resources to the most serious crimes is important, letting smaller offenses go unpunished has its dangers.

"Law enforcement should contact ICE to make sure illegal aliens are removed from their jurisdiction at the first possible opportunity," Feere said. "Unfortunately, some law enforcement agencies will not report an illegal alien to ICE until after a violent attack occurs. Public safety is harmed by such policies."